By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily while celebrating Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Deerfield Beach, July 22, 2018.
I remember a story of a young priest who was celebrating Mass for the school children and the theme was the Lord is my shepherd. In his homily he decided to engage the children and ask them questions. They tell lawyers never to ask a question during a trial that you don’t know what the answer will be. This priest probably should have listened to that advice. These kids lived in the city and probably never had been on a farm or even seen a sheep – and when he asked them: “What is a shepherd?” most of the kids just looked at him with blank stares – until one kid bravely raised his hand and said, “Father, isn't a shepherd a mean dog?” The boy didn't have any experience of shepherds tending their flocks; but he obviously had not a too happy experience with a German shepherd.
In today’s first reading, if we take Jeremiah at his word, the Israelites did not have happy experiences with their “shepherds” – the kings who were appointed to look after the people.
They were either false shepherds or they were weak shepherds – in any case, the wolves had their way. Some of the sheep were devoured – and the rest were scattered. Jeremiah, looking over the sad situation of his people, speaks in the name of the Lord who says through him: “I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the Lord.”
Today’s Gospel reading describes Jesus giving up some needed rest to tend to the people who were flocking to him. St. Mark says, “His heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.”
Sheep without shepherds. This was the reality that Jeremiah described in the first reading. This was the reality Jesus encountered in the Gospel reading. Doesn’t this in many ways describe the reality of the world of today? In each case, scattered sheep…or really, scattered people…
This indicates that something has really gone wrong, doesn’t it? The wolves are loose – and we see the carnage all around us. Current events show us how bad leadership, broken or failed systems result in scattered people, suffering people.
Divorce…drug abuse…have scattered families. But we can also list a litany of places where whole nations have been or are being scattered: the Middle East, Africa, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We witness the influx of children – some brought by their parents, many more unaccompanied – who are crossing our borders fleeing gang violence in their own countries of origin: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
As the vast crowd pressed up against Jesus and his disciples – to the point that they could not even eat – so too the scattered peoples of our times press upon us and they disturb our peace, shaking us out of our complacency.
How do we look at these scattered sheep of our 21st century world – a world in which people think they can live while pretending that God does not matter, a world in which globalization has made us neighbors – but, as Pope Benedict once remarked, it hasn’t made us brothers and sisters.
Do we look at these scattered sheep with contempt? If we do, aren’t we just blaming the victim; and not the wolves? Do we regard them with indifference? But do not the Scriptures admonish us: we are our brothers’ keepers?
I know people have conflicted feelings about globalization, about migratory flows and many other things. The Gospels offer us no easy solutions to the social problems of their day or our day. But indifference is not a solution; and contempt will only open the door yet again for “final solutions.” Abortion, euthanasia, genocide are solutions born of contempt or of indifference to the life and dignity of the human person and our obligation to solidarity.
But the Gospel does say that Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them. Pity – or perhaps better word – compassion – was Jesus’ response; and pity or compassion – not contempt or indifference – has to be the response of Jesus’ disciple. “Señor, ten piedad… Lord, have mercy.”This is the first thing we ask of the Lord at the beginning of Mass. Later, we say: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
You might have heard the expression, “bleeding heart.” It’s usually used today as an adjective to the noun “liberal,” as in “bleeding heart” liberal. But originally, “bleeding heart” was an anti-Catholic slur. It wasn’t meant to refer to “liberals” but to Catholics. And there is no other religious group so involved in social ministries: Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Health Services, and so on. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy “is us.” For the real bleeding heart is Jesus’ Sacred Heart pierced for us on Calvary.
As Catholics, our faith is beyond the political categories of liberal or conservative. At any rate, politics will not save us from the wolves. But, as St. Paul tells the Ephesians in the second reading, “you who were once far off have become near by the blood of Christ.”
Pope Francis has described the Church as a field hospital, a MASH unit near the front lines, that attends to the wounded fallen in life’s battles. And weren’t we all once scattered sheep now rescued and brought to green pastures by the Good Shepherd of our souls?
“I will give you shepherds.” This was God’s promise spoken through his prophet, Jeremiah. And of course that promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “The Lord is my shepherd” we prayed in the responsorial psalm. He is our shepherd – and he is the shepherd of the least, the lost and the last, of the scattered sheep of our world. Jesus is the “Good Shepherd” who is at the same time the gate or door. A shepherd, they say, when he puts his sheep into the sheepfold at night would sleep in the doorway – putting his life on the line to keep the sheep inside and the wolf outside. The scene of today’s Gospel paints a picture of what he meant when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
In the Alleluia verse, we sang: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.” “They follow me.” May we follow the example of the Good Shepherd and show compassion towards the scattered sheep of our times.
In the end, what’s important is not so much to know what a shepherd is as it is for us to know The Shepherd.
